The honours of the school, whether in class or in field, always seemed to go in any direction but their own, and as, for five or six years at any rate, they had been unable to claim any one distinguished Willoughbite as a member of their house, they had come to regard themselves somewhat in the light of Ishmaelites.
Everybody's hand seemed to be against them, and they therefore didn't see why their hand shouldn't be against every one.
It was this feeling which had prompted the assaults of which the youthful Parretts had come to complain, and which the Welchers distributed as impartially as possible among all their fellow Willoughbites.
The fact was, Welch's was a bad house.

The fellows there rarely made common cause for any lawful purpose, certainly never for the credit of the school.

They were split up into cliques and sets of all sorts, and the rising generation among them were left to grow up pretty much as they liked.
On the afternoon in question an entertainment on a small scale was going on in the study jointly occupied by Cusack and Pilbury.

Captain Cusack, R.N., when he had parted from his dutiful son the night before, had put five shillings into his hand as a pleasant memento of his visit; and Master Cusack, directly after second school that morning, had skulked down into Shellport with his hat-box, and returned in due time with the same receptacle packed almost to bursting with dough-nuts, herrings, peppermint-rock, and sherbet.

With these dainties to recommend him (and his possession of them soon got wind) it need hardly be said he became all of a sudden the most popular youth in Welch's.